ADR-0078.

Date: 2026-09-24 Status: accepted 2026-09-24 — the maintainer handed the open question of ADR-0077 back to be investigated to a conclusion rather than arbitrated; this is that conclusion Deciders: the maintainer Method: each candidate rule read in full against the criterion ADR-0043 set for a category, and the written absences dated against the carrier they answered

Context

ADR-0077 left one question open: a domain-core category would reach the files a citation never can — a file nobody instructed yet, above all a new one — but the rules it would attach to had each declared, in writing, that they carry no territory. Reopening a written decision is the cost ADR-0041 says must never be paid silently, so the question was: does any of those decisions actually object to a category?

Dated, the answer changes. All 64 absences were written on 2026-07-31 at 11:21 (feat(rules): declared absence of territory, and the editorial pass over all 64 rules). The category carrier arrived the same day at 16:45 (ADR-0043 tiers 1-2), and its delivery gave governs: to the nine rules that already had a glob. The fifty written absences were never re-read against the new carrier: ADR-0043 named reopening them as a cost and did not examine whether any needed it. So every noTerritory: reason answers the question "which glob?", and only some of them also answer "which subject?".

Read against ADR-0043's criterion — a category is a class of artifacts a shipped rule's own text is about, added when a rule needs it, never by quota — the candidates split cleanly:

• hexa-architecture (HIGH). Its text prescribes the inner hexagon by name — core/, "UNTOUCHABLE
  • Pure business logic", and the dependency rule "Core never imports from adapters. Adapters implement ports defined in core." Its absence reads: "any glob broad enough to be true would be **, which states nothing." That objects to a glob, and it is right about globs: core/ is one project's spelling. It says nothing against a category, which is exactly the object ADR-0043 built so that a rule names the subject and the mission names the files.
• hexa-move-deterministic-out, frontier-deterministic-boundary (CRITICAL). Their subject is the split between model and program, "wherever a load-bearing value is produced". In the example mission that happens to be a domain file; in general it is not a layer. Not domain-core.
• security-prompt-injection, security-human-agent-trust. Their reasons are about the shape of the whole system and of every output, not a class of files — substantive, and unchanged.
• hexa-typescript-native, contracts-governance mention the core, and their absences are substantive too ("judged on the imports of the whole codebase"; "a territory on the ports alone would declare less than the rule governs"). Unchanged.

Decision

domain-core joins the closed vocabulary, and hexa-architecture governs it.

• The category: the inner hexagon — domain, use cases and the port interfaces the core owns; code that must import nothing from adapters. No deployment manifest can know which files those are, so it is only ever bound by the mission map (runward/territory.md), never derived.
• The rule: hexa-architecture replaces its noTerritory: with governs: [domain-core, port-adapter] — the two layers its dependency rule names. It carries no glob, which is the point. It is the first shipped rule whose territory is a category alone; governs: is a declared territory, and the "every rule is ruled on" guard now says so.
• One written decision is reopened, and only one. The other six candidates keep their absence, for the reasons above. The four rules the example mission cites on guard.ts stay reachable through ADR-0077's citation section — a reminder, which is what they warrant.
• The example mission carries a map. Its runward/territory.md binds code/src/core/{domain, application,ports}/** to domain-core. ADR-0043 says runward never writes this file for a mission; the example's tree is runward's own, so its map describes runward's layout, never an operator's, and it shows the tier-3 mechanism working instead of describing it.

Measured, in the example mission: rules --for code/src/core/domain/guard.ts matches hexa-architecture through runward/territory.md:9, and so does a core file that does not exist yet. Without the map line, domain-core is reported unresolved — a missing binding, never an empty answer.

Alternatives discarded

• Attach domain-core to the four cited rules. Rejected: their subject is not the domain core, and a category that made them surface on every core file would be the false positive ADR-0043 split secret-boundary out of configuration to avoid.
• Leave the fifty absences as written. Rejected for this one rule: an absence that answers a question the carrier no longer asks is a stale decision, and keeping it would keep a rule whose text names the core unreachable from the core.
• Re-read all fifty now. Deferred, not refused: this ADR re-read the seven that bear on the core. The rest is named in the reevaluation trigger.

Consequences

• Positive. A new file in the core surfaces the rule that governs the core — the half ADR-0077's citation section cannot reach — with the map line that bound it.
• Negative, accepted. It depends on the mission writing one map line; without it the category is unresolved and says so. The rule set's declared-territory count moves from 14 to 15, and unscoped.count from 50 to 49.
• On other boundaries. The gate is untouched: governs: is read by --for only.

Reevaluation trigger (mandatory, dated)

Reopen if a mission reports domain-core surfacing hexa-architecture where its dependency rule does not apply (a false positive), or if field use shows missions do not write the map line. Separately, the forty-nine remaining absences were written against globs only: re-read them against the category carrier the next time a rule is reported unreachable from files its text is about.

Trigger set on: 2026-09-24 · Watched via: rules --for field reports and characterize's territory-coverage section

References

• ADR-0043 — the category carrier and its criterion.
• ADR-0077 — the question this settles.
• test/unit/rules-for-domain-core.test.js — guard.ts, a not-yet-written core file, an adapter, and the unmapped case.